EP 935 Did You Realize Youth Prisons are Shutting Down Across the Country?

It’s fair to say that I had no idea that a society which likes to lock all of our troubles away, was now releasing many youthful offenders into different types of therapeutic settings, which take various forms.  This phenomenon has been going on for the last twenty years as one state after another has shuttered its youth prisons and stopped trying youth as adults, except in extreme cases.  The number of children locked in cages has dropped by 75 percent.  Nell Bernstein, author of “In Our Future We Are Free”, explains the forces that moved our society from one most concerned about “juvenile superpredators” to a time in which the youth prison is rapidly fading from view.  Interestingly, much of the dynamism behind this movement came from the young people left in horrific conditions within these facilities, as well as some prison administrators who themselves were concerned by the treatment of these young offenders.

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